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>EECHES by 

DR, ERNEST FLAGG HENDERSON 
PROF. M. J. BONN 
HON. CHARLES NAGEL 



SPEECHES 

BY 

Dr.ERNESTFLAGG HENDERSON 

<</-» »» 

on Lrermany 

Prof. M. J. BONN 

on 'international U naerstanaing ana 
International Cjo-ofteration 

Hon. CHARLES NAGEL 

on "'"Present UJ ay Issues 



Delivered before the German University League at its 

Anniversary Meeting at the Astor Gallery, 

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, 

October 30th, 1915 



INTRODUCTIONS BY 

Prof. WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD 

OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



^. CL. < ft ULl 






/ to 



Professor Shepherd. 

Members of the German University League and Friends: 

It is not so very long ago that I served as toastmaster at a festive gather- 
ing, the subject for discussion being "Neutrality." There and then I remarked 
that, as a professor of history, I felt that, since the facts underlying this war 
had not yet been sufficiently ascertained, it would be wise to suspend one's 
judgment. That observation was quoted in a certain magazine, the editor of 
which declared that, in his opinion, what I had said was a good definition 
of a historian, namely, a person who thinks that nothing should be said 
about anything until a hundred years after everybody concerned is dead, includ- 
ing the historian himself, who had been dead all the time! 

It so happens that the three speakers whom we are privileged to hear this 
evening, and your toastmaster also, have been students at German universities. 
All of them, furthermore, are, or have been, professors. Those of you who 
recall German history will remember the days of 1848 when so many profes- 
sors were active in framing a new constitution for the Fatherland. Perhaps 
it was not without foreboding that their critics may have cried: "Jetzt ist 
das Vaterland verloren-mit hundert fiinfzig Professoren! " Now you are 
going to listen only to four. 

It is one thing to be an instructor actually engaged in the task of uplifting 
the young; it is quite another to dwell on the mountain tops of New Hamp- 
shire, occupying a point of vantage, from which, as scholar and philosopher, it 
is possible to gaze at the world from a broad angle of vision. The gentleman 
from that region who is about to address you is renowned for his many 
contributions to our knowledge of history. Chief among them is what he 
calls "A Short History of Germany." It consists of two volumes, containing 
988 pages and 335,000 words! Though it is not exactly short, it is an 
exceedingly good history. I hope that its distinguished author may make 
it "shorter" still by adding to it! Having studied in the land of efficiency, 
he will now tell of what he has seen and heard and experienced there. It is 
my privilege to present to you Dr. Ernest F. Henderson. 



Dr. Henderson 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

It was with pleasure that I accepted the invitation to speak before the 
German University League, and for the following reason: In these days when 
German civilization, Deutsche Kultur, is the butt of senseless attacks and 
ignorant gibes, it is the special duty of us former students and graduates of 
German universities not to keep silent. I should feel myself a traitor to the 
University of Berlin, where I passed some of the happiest years of my life, were 
I to ignore such an invitation as this. I shall be happy if I can contribute 
even in the smallest degree to spreading the knowledge of what that Kultur 
really is and what it has accomplished. And I do not fear in the least that 
by so doing I shall sacrifice the future, either of myself or of my children, as 
one at least of our prominent educators seems to think will inevitably be the 
case with those who speak for Germany. It is a poor Americanism that tries 
to down the free expression of opinion by such a threat as this, and I for one 
refuse to be intimidated. It is rank fanaticism, it is the language that a 
Robespierre might have used. 

I was asked by your secretary to speak on some of those points in 
Germany which struck me favorably or unfavorably. I am particularly glad 
to do this as during my last stay, which extended over nine months, terminating 
only two days before the war broke out, almost nothing struck me unfavorably, 
but almost everything more than favorably. And I think I saw as many sides 
of life as have most of you who are Germans by birth. My special interests 
carried me far out of the beaten track; into burgomasters' offices, into industrial 
and trade schools, among inland harbors and on canals, into workmen's 
museums and municipal pawnshops, into labor exchanges, into factories and 
beer breweries, into hospitals, into jails and penitentiaries, into Jew-baiting 
meetings and the Prussian diet, into workmen's houses, and into crematories. 
I was quite a frequent attendant at football games and athletic sports. 

I spent periods varying from two days to ten weeks — on my last trip 
alone — in Hamburg, Hanover, Diisseldorf, Cologne, Engelskirchen, Frankfort, 
Strassburg, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Ulm, Augsburg, Munich, Dresden, Leipzig, 
Berlin and Kiel. I was an ardent devourer of the newspapers, often reading 
as many as four a day — and I wish to bear witness here to the fact that to 
the best of my remembrance I never came across a single statement in one of 
them to make me suspect that Germany was out for any other kind of conquest 
than that legitimate conquest of trade which comes from superior training, 
superior organization and superior intelligence and application. I read many 
expressions of apprehension as to what France, England and Russia were 
about, but not one, I think, that showed a belligerent spirit. 

But I won't go into that matter any further. My theme to-night is 
German efficiency. Let me say here that a new book called "Socialized 
Germany" has recently appeared, which tells Americans far more about German 
efficiency than they have hitherto known. But the book is vitiated by the bias 
of the author, which leads him into misstatements that deserve the strongest con- 
demnation. Howe's bugbear is the Prussian Junker. The Prussian Junker may 
have his faults but he is by no means so powerful or so all-pervading as Howe 
imagines. Again and again Howe tells us that Prussia is Germany, that Prussia 
is feudal and that conditions of land-holding in Prussia are about what they 
were in the eighteenth century. Gentlemen, I find that of the total number 
of farms and estates in all Germany, including Prussia, of course, only four per 
cent, are owned in larger parcels than 250 acres. Some of the estates are 
enormous, I grant. So are some of our ranches in our own West. But even 
then 78 per cent, of the whole area of Germany is in farms and estates of 

4 



under 250 acres. Yet Howe dares to say- — I quote him literally — that 
"land monopoly is the economic framework of Prussia and through Prussia 
of the Empire as well." If Howe would look into the system of land- 
holding in England and Ireland he could make out a far better case for 
feudalism — there land monopoly is far more the economic framework than in 
Germany. 

I won't detain you any longer with a critique of Howe except to men- 
tion two or three glaring errors that he makes in trying to elucidate his feudal 
theory. While the King of England, he says, "disposed of his crown lands," 
the King of Prussia "kept his feudal holdings." I won't develop this point 
except to say that the statement is absolutely false. The crown lands were taken 
over by the Prussian State, although a part of the revenues from them goes 
to pay the King's civil list. Here is a still better one: We are told that 
Stein and Hardenberg brought about the division of the land into small farms 
but that their reforms did not penetrate beyond the southern states: "The 
landowners of Prussia declined to permit the Agrarian reforms to be adopted." 
But, gentlemen, if I am not mistaken, Stein and Hardenberg were ministers of 
the King of Prussia and had nothing whatever to do with internal reforms in 
the other states. I am sure there are men here who can bear me out in this 
statement. 

Here is still another: "As a further check on democracy," Howe tells us, 
the members of the Reichstag are not paid." But they are paid, my dear Mr. 
Howe, and your statement, like hundreds of others that are daily made about 
Germany, is absolutely false. A change in the constitution of May 21, 1906, 
gives the members a salary of 3,000 marks a year, with 20 marks deducted 
for every day of absence. 

I want to get off the subject of Mr. Howe, but I must just add that 
conservative and Junker are not synonymous, that the so-called free conservatives 
stand up for the rights of industry quite as much as for those of agriculture, that 
many of the contentions, even of the Junkers, have been fully justified by 
Germany's ability to feed herself during this war, and finally that on checking 
up the names of the representatives in the Prussian diet of those "descend- 
ants from the old feudal barons," as Howe calls them, I find that only 101 
out of the 442 members of the Prussian lower house have so much as a 
von before their names. The rest are plain Mr. Braun, Mr. Miiller, Mr. 
Bauer, Mr. Kahler, Mr. Heinz, Mr. Noll, Dr. Levy, etc. Eighty-three of 
them are doctors of one kind or another. 

But to return to German efficiency. That efficiency in the ultimate instance 
is the work of the German schools. I will not dwell on the points pertaining 
to them that are familiar to all of you; the care with which the curriculum 
is thought out, the rigid training of the teachers — why in Germany a child's 
intelligence is considered something so. sacred that even teachers in private 
schools have to pass a state examination — the splendid equipment on which no 
expense is spared, particularly in the free industrial and continuation schools. 
In Diisseldorf the city even supplies carts and horses with which the butcher's 
and grocer's and baker's delivery boys can practice careful driving. What 
struck me most, I think, was the care and devotion with which the least ray of 
childish intelligence is hunted down and fostered. Below the public schools 
are so-called Hilfschulen or aid schools, where attention is given to the back- 
ward child according to his individual needs. Below the aid schools are pre- 
paratory classes for the aid schools as well as for the schools, and free kinder- 
gartens, while in Frankfort at least there is an observation station with its own 
farm which takes the very worst possible cases from the aid schools, and begins 
with the systematic development of the child's faculties and motor impulses. In 
Berlin, if children are bedridden or crippled or so deformed and repulsive 



that they cannot appear in school, regular teachers employed by the city for 
the purpose seek them out in their homes and give them their lessons there. 
That most unfortunate class, the illegitimate children, are cared for in the most 
systematic way imaginable, special guardians being appointed to look after their 
interests. In the industrial continuation schools not only are the children taught 
to plan and execute their work with the utmost precision and skill, but they 
are taught in a hundred ways to advance the interests of German industry as 
a whole: to keep up the reputation for good materials as well as for good work- 
manship, to be cleanly in all their ways, to estimate the amount of profit an 
artisan may reasonably charge for a given piece of work — I remember it was 
fifteen per cent, over and above the price of his labor and materials. These 
trade and continuation schools have raised up the happiest and most self-respect- 
ing class of workmen in the world, the least quarrelsome and contentious, the 
best dressed, the most intelligent, the proudest of their occupation. I shall never 
forget visiting a class of chimney-sweeps and finding that they were obliged to 
learn the construction of their chimneys down to the very last detail, to be able 
to tell what was the matter with the chimneys if they smoke, and to demonstrate 
by a drawing and mathematically just how much higher a chimney ought to 
be in order to remedy the evil. They even go into the chemistry 
of soot, and of the gases that are apt to cause a conflagration. Don't you 
think even chimney sweeping becomes quite attractive when studied in that 
way? And that is merely one example out of hundreds of what is done for 
the dignity of work. In some of the higher branches, especially in the all-day 
trade schools, the pupil gets an entirely new outlook on the world as a whole. 
In the garden of one of the trade schools at Frankfort I found that specimens 
were grown of all the different kinds of trees that furnished the wood of the 
wood-workers. But enough of the German schools, although the subject is 
inexhaustible. 

Let me try to illustrate German efficiency at the hand of two other 
kinds of institutions. The first is the national compulsory insurance. At 
the time of my first journey to Germany it was just going into effect. At the 
time of my last journey it was just going into effect for whole new classes of the 
population, for domestic servants and for employees. In the sickness insurance 
alone twenty million people are now insured, each paying his weekly contribution 
and drawing benefits aggregating nearly five hundred million marks a year. Since 
1911 the procedure in branches of the insurance as a whole has been codified 
in no less than 1 ,805 paragraphs. 

I can't go into details, of course, on an occasion like this. The benefits 
would seem to us actually small, but relatively they are quite large. Thus a 
young workman who has complied with certain conditions from the time when 
he was sixteen to twenty-one years of age and paid in forty marks, will if he then 
become an invalid, be entitled to draw a pension of one hundred and forty-one 
marks and sixty pfennigs for all the rest of his life, which, I think, is a pretty 
good return on his compulsory investment. It is the elasticity of the system and 
the attention to every little detail that strikes one with wonder. There are now, 
for instance, about ten thousand sickness exchequers or krankenkassen — there 
were until recently more than 20,000 — and beyond a fixed minimum no two 
out of the 10,000 need necessarily give exactly the same amount of benefits. 
One or two little practical details of the accident insurance impressed me very 
much, too, and showed, I think, the spirit that animates the whole immense 
organization. If a woman loses her right arm she is usually awarded ten per 
cent, more damages than would be the case with a man. And why? Because 
a one-armed man can find occupation as a watchman or a janitor, whereas a 
woman will be constantly hampered all her life in moving about her pots and 
kettles. I found, too, that relatively high damages were paid in cases of accident 



where a man's ability to work was not much impaired, but where some scar or 
disfigurement would make it more difficult for him to get employment. But it 
was the preventative work of the national insurance that impressed me most of 
all. What a force we have here for the betterment of human conditions, and 
the curing of human ills I think very few even of you university students have 
ever realized. The insurance has spread out its activities until it not only takes 
care of its sick and well members, but of their whole families besides, even giving 
a trousseau to the girls when they marry I 

It does all this, too, as a good business proposition. Happiness, well-being 
and health go together. Take another case like this, for instance. A tuberculous 
child in a. family makes the risk greater for each adult and tends to increase the 
load on the insurance. It has been proved, I believe, that certain preventative 
measures, including regular medical observation of the family, come to less in 
the end than the insurance would otherwise have to pay for its sick members 
alone. So the insurance now takes enlightened care of thousands of house- 
holds; sees that the children live hygienically and get enough good food and 
fresh air. If they need it the insurance sends them to a hospital, a home or 
even to a watering place; it conducts a regular house-to-house war on ignorance, 
prejudice and superstition; it actually pays its patients, after an illness, not to 
go back to work too soon, and thus run the risk of a relapse and possibly of 
permanent disability. It is all, as I have said, a working business proposition; 
permanent disability is the costliest thing with which the insurance has to contend. 
In the same way the branch of the insurance that deals with accidents has 
more than 400 experts drawing a salary of over 2,000,000 marks, whose only 
business is to go round among the factories and see that the safety regulations 
are obeyed. This is entirely apart from the regular state inspection which, too, 
is very thorough. The invalidity and survivor insurance has the largest funds 
at its disposal — it invested nearly 200,000,000 marks in 1912 alone. And 
how does it invest its funds? It has out more than a billion marks in loans 
to city governments, savings banks, building associations, etc., for improving 
workmen's dwellings and for similar humanitarian objects. 

I will give you just one good homely sample of its methods: Good 
teeth means good digestion and good digestion means longer life with fewer 
invalidity and survivor pensions. Accordingly in 1912 the insurance provided 
40,000 of its clients free with false teeth at a cost of more than a million 
marks ! 

I won't go any further into this question of the national insurance. But 
you may be interested to hear the verdict of a Frenchman on it — a verdict 
written, of course, before the war: "The money spent in carrying out the 
insurance laws reappears in a thousand forms. It is transmuted into family 
happiness, health and dignity and creates a strong, vital Germany that will last 
forever." This Frenchman will probably not desire to-day "a strong, vital 
Germany that will last forever," but he said it, all the same, at a time when 
Frenchmen thought it worth while to face and to tell the truth. 

One might imagine that when the war broke out the compulsory insurance 
would have been utterly demoralized. Millions of men. called to the 
armies, ceased paying their weekly contributions — hundreds of thousands 
were likely to die or to need hospital care in distant parts where the insurance 
could not possibly reach them. I consider the speed and thoroughness with 
which this whole matter was settled one of the greatest triumphs of German 
organization. By August 4, only five days after the war-cloud first broke, two 
fundamental laws had been passed and were in force which regulated the whole 
difficult matter. One is called "a law concerning the retention of claims on the 
sickness insurance — Gesetz betreffend Erhaltung von Anwartschaften aus der 
Krankenversicherung — and the other a law to secure the solvency of the sickness 

7 



exchequers. Gesetz betreffend Sicherung der Leistungs-fahigkeit der Kranken- 
kassen. So early in the war, then, this matter was settled once and for all. All 
that was needed later was a few ministerial decrees to make the matter clear 
— and a considerable extention of the benefits accorded to women before and 
after childbirth, to which the government contributed largely. 

So much for the imperial compulsory insurance. 

I was almost as much impressed by another German institution. I speak 
of the free city labor bureaus or employment agencies. They also work 
for family happiness, health and dignity. We in America do not begin to realize 
their achievements and their possibilities. We have free state employment 
agencies in Massachusetts, but the free employment agency in a city like Frank- 
fort of 400,000 inhabitants fills in a year almost exactly double the number 
of positions as all the Massachusetts State agencies combined with offices in 
Boston, Springfield, Worcester and Fall River. 

And filling positions is but one of the activities of the German agencies. I 
recommend a visit to the agency at Cologne as one of the greatest experiences 
of progress we Americans can have. Here in a beautiful building erected for 
the purpose at a cost of 600,000 marks we have what amounts to a working- 
man's club. Every detail is psychologically perfect; there are 8 or 1 entrances 
that prevent awkward encounters; the very decorations on the wall are thought 
out so as to cheer up the man who comes there out of a job. He has well- 
warmed, well-lighted waiting rooms where he can spend the whole day if he 
pleases; he can buy refreshments for almost nothing; there is even a room where 
he can have his shabby clothes patched up so as to put in a good appearance. 
If he is a clerk or an educated man there is a room where he can sit and write 
addresses or fold circulars at so much an hour while he is waiting for a better 
job. If he needs legal advice he can get it free. If he wants an apartment for 
his family there is an office in the building, inspectors from which have first 
visited the apartment, taken a sketch of the rooms and ascertained the price 
so as to save him useless tramping about and to make sure that he will not be 
cheated in the matter of rent. There is an office in the same building that will 
insure him against unemployment. 

What I cannot convey in mere words is the spirit of organization and of 
liberality as well that pervades all these labor bureaus. The workmen them- 
selves have their full share in the management, the bureaus are all in close 
touch with each other; if they send a man to a distant point they pay his fare 
on the railroad and trust to the employers for reimbursement. I was told in 
Dusseldorf that they actually come out ahead on this item because the owners 
are so grateful for the trouble they are saved that they usually send a few marks 
more than the mere fare. There is one department of the labor exchanges that 
is worthy of the highest possible praise. It is that for Erwerbsbeschrankten, or 
people who because of infirmity or for some other reason are not capable of doing 
a full day's work. Or there may be a prejudice against them as in the case of 
discharged prisoners. Some of the exchanges in this way have done the noblest 
kind of work. It has been so successful in Dusseldorf, for instance, that, by an 
expert's computation, the money saved the city's charitable institutions on 
which these unfortunates would otherwise have been a burden has been suffi- 
cient to pay the whole yearly cost of the whole labor exchange. 

Just think what it means to a workman to be spared all that tramping 
from employer to employer, only to be rejected nine-tenths of the time ! All 
the expense of advertising or of fees to agencies which are out merely for gain 
and that have at best a mere local clientele, all that sickening uncertainty day 
after day and week after week. The German free city agencies are so admirably 
run, they have everything about the employer and the applicant so carefully 
card-catalogued and formulated, they make such absolutely lavish use of the 



telephone — in fact their system works like such carefully oiled and well-cared-for 
machinery that the majority of cases are disposed of within the 24 hours. In so 
short a time as that the cares and troubles of thousands of German families are 
swept away — and not merely laborers' families. The free city agencies have 
won such recognition that all kinds of tradesmen, and even scientifically trained 
persons like engineers and school teachers, are using them more and more. 

One would have thought that in the case of the labor exchanges, too, the 
war would have induced utter demoralization. Many of the exchange officials 
were called to active service, whole branches of industry were paralyzed, and 
hundreds of thousands of workers thrown out of employment, the railroads were 
fully occupied with the mobilization, even the automobiles were requisitioned, and 
there seemed no way of transporting workmen from one place to another. Yet 
it was just on distant farms and estates that laborers were most needed for bring- 
ing in the harvest. The way in which these problems were solved will form 
one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the war. Not only were 
the labor exchanges kept running, but their number was instantly increased — 
they were instantly put intp closer touch with each other, and a great sort of labor 
clearing house was established in Berlin — the Reichszentrale der Arbeitsnach- 
weise. When there was no other way of transporting the workers they were sent 
in boats on the canals or sent forth in troops on foot after arrangements had 
been made to lodge them at inns along the roadside. It was realized that many 
men would have to change their trades and the workshops of the industrial 
schools were at once utilized for giving the most necessary instruction. 

I fear I have been talking entirely too long — I merely wish to say in 
conclusion that the working together of Germany's splendid institutions has done 
almost as much to win the war as has the unparalleled bravery of her armies. 
If ever a nation kept her head in the worst conceivable emergency that nation 
is Germany. The heart has gone on throbbing and has never allowed the face 
to grow pale or the extremities to weaken. 

What I have said about the schools, the labor exchanges and the national 
insurance might have been said about a dozen other activities: the national state 
and municipal utilities and industrial enterprises, the co-operative societies that 
have enabled the farmer to keep up the nation's supply of food, the savings banks 
and credit institutions, the splendid hospitals and charity organizations. Each 
and every one of these have helped toward success in this awful struggle. It is 
the spirit behind these activities, ladies and gentlemen, the deathless devotion to 
duty, the real interest in the welfare of all the people, the scientific probing that 
has evolved from years of ceaseless toil and experimenting the very best method 
of dealing with every social problem — this, ladies and gentlemen, is to me the 
meaning of German Kultur, end when I hear men scoff at and deride it I 
feel like going to them and saying, Here, you fellows, you are talking through 
your hats, you are criticizing what to you is a sealed book, you no longer talk 
that way about the German army because all that it does is out in the light of 
day, you know nothing whatever about those other splendid achievements of 
organization, you think that everything — money, labor, thought — has been sacri- 
ficed to the one end of conquering other people's territory. There never was a 
greater mistake in the wide world. When I think of what our country could gain 
by a clear comprehension, by a frank and generous recognition of all that Ger- 
many has done for civilization, by a fervent study of her methods and a proper 
adaptation of them to our needs, instead of by a blind unreasoning hostility as 
bitter as that of the Jacobins to the aristocrats in the French revolution, I feel 
like going on my knees and praying to God, "Father forgive them, for they 
know not what they do!" 



Professor Shepherd. 

You have heard what constitutes German efficiency. May I take 
advantage of my position as toastmaster to append to Dr. Henderson's interest- 
ing address a definition which I have ventured to coin of that highly con- 
troversial word "Kultur." You will remember that, soon after the nations 
of Europe entered upon their mighty struggle of swords, there arose here a 
contest, no less mighty, of words! It had to do with the question as to the 
identity or diversity of "Kultur" and "culture." Men who claimed they 
knew declared the two were identical. Others equally versed maintained that 
"Kultur" is merely 'organized efficiency." The expression sounds plausible 
enough; but suppose you analyze it. Is there such a thing as unorganized 
or disorganized efficiency? Clearly, efficiency to be efficient must be organized; 
if so, the qualifying word is wholly superfluous. "Kultur" and "culture" 
are altogether different terms. One is social, the other individual, in its nature. 
One arises out of conditions largely peculiar to Germany, the other out of 
conditions which are an inheritance of western and southern Europe. To my 
mind "Deutsche Kultur" is "that stage of human achievement which is reached 
by an efficient application of the best results of activity in all branches of 
knowledge, gained at home and chosen from abroad, to the welfare of the 
individual and the slate." That is not "culture," but it is ' Kultur" — or at 
least, so I venture to think. 

We have long since recognized the great debt that we of this country 
and many others owe to the German Fatherland. It was with Germany that 
we first had a regular exchange of professors, of intellectual ambassadors, as 
it were. As you well know, our higher institutions of learning are derived 
from English and German models. The one has given us our colleges, the 
other our university faculties. 

Despite these influences, and despite the fact that wars may rage and 
statesmen imagine a vain thing, the real relationship of nations to one another 
is determined by the attitude of the man-in-the-street. What this person thinks 
he knows about foreigners creates his beliefs and directs his acts. His brow 
being neither high nor low, his mentality, presumably, is that of the level- 
minded, and therefore to be trusted. It is this man-in-the-street who needs 
education, if ever good fellowship among nations is permanently to prevail. 
War and finance, commerce and diplomacy have all failed signally to remove 
international suspicion and discord, to establish a mutuality of understanding 
among the peoples of the earth. Education dealing with the man-in-the-street 
can do it, and some day will. You all knew those famous lines of Tenny- 
son's which have been so often quoted: 

"Till the war-drums throb no longer and the battle-flags are furled 
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World." 

But it is what follows that has the real significance: 

"There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, Iapt in universal law." 

To assure the establishment of this rule of common sense is the task of 
education. 

A great factor in such a work of co-operation is the exchange professor. 
He comes as a bearer of tidings of friendliness and sympathy and under- 
standing, to join in our common good will. Since the outbreak of the war 
intellectual Germany has been represented by only one of these international 
messengers and co-workers in the United States. Thus far he has been 
associated primarily with two of our more prominent universities, Wisconsin 
and Cornell. Ere I present this gentleman, I want to ask him a question. 
"Professor Bonn, are you a Prussian?" 
Professor Bonn. 

"I am a Prussian and a Bavarian." (Laughter.) 
Professor Shepherd. 

That spoils in a measure what I was going to say! To the mind of our 
average sympathizer with the "Allies" a Prussian appears to be something 
like the Cyclops (laughter), as characterized by Vergil in one of the most 
difficult lines I ever had to scan: "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens cui 
lumen ademptum" — "A huge, horrible misshapen monster, with his eye put 
out." (Laughter.) But the South German is no Prussian; he is simply the 
real German who is temporarily Prussianized (More laughter.) Whatever 
his degree of Prussianization, he does not seem to care particularly about his 
sad condition, so long in fact as it is not the Prussian whose eye is put out! 

Now it is my pleasure to present the exchange professor from Germany, 
the man from Prussia and Bavaria, Director of the College of Commerce in Munich, 
Professor of the University of Munich, Dr. Moiitz J. Bonn. 

10 



Professor Bonn. 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

After having served for two and a half terms as visiting professor to 
three great American institutions, I might feel tempted indeed to discuss that 
form of international co-operation embodied in the exchange of scholars from 
different countries. Such a discussion ought not to start from the point of 
view of personal experiences: It ought to take into account the basic obstacles 
to international co-operation. 

The hardest lesson the war has taught us is, that the nations of the 
world do not understand each other. This misunderstanding of each other's 
ways is not confined to any single nation. Americans have for some time 
been marveling at what they call the peculiar twist of the Teutonic mind, 
which will not see things as the Americans see them. They are unaware, that 
their astonishment is but an open acknowledgment of their own inability of 
comprehending another nation's point of view. Whether that point of view be 
right or wrong, could only be determined after their intellectual surprise had 
passed away. 

And the Germans on their part, cannot understand how the people of 
the United States can consider themselves the champions of humanity, whilst 
they let their ammunition plants run overtime, to facilitate the killing of the 
sons of a nation, with whom they desire to live in friendship and amity. For 
the Germans cannot see, that in a commonwealth organized on the principle 
of non-intervention, individuals and classes may indulge in acts, the neutral 
government of a more socialised state would not tolerate. 

National misunderstanding and ignorance of each other's way of thinking 
do not exist only between the United States and Germany; though the fact 
that Germany and Germany's ways have come in for a good deal of criticism 
lately, is just now embittering the relations between the two people. 

England and France, as seen in the limelights kindled by ardent American 
admirers, are quite as remote from the real France and the real England, as 
is the Germany of the grim pro-ally from the Germany of the Germans. 
Proud and aristocratic feudal England, the England of the Upper Classes, who 
wage this war, is a somewhat remarkable ideal for a democracy which believes 
that all men are equal. And the imperialistic French Republic, which has 
turned from one war of conquest to another during the last thirty years, is 
indeed a quaint object of adoration for sentimental pacificists; quite apart 
from the fact, that her capital, the playground of a gay, if somewhat wicked 
world, does not quite correspond with one's ideas of a holy city, where 
Puritan moralists ought to worship. 

The Europeans, on their side, indulge in similar misconceptions. The 
American commonwealth, as depicted in their minds, is certainly not the 
America of the living Americans. Each race of travelers, when setting out 
on their Western tour, are trying to find a country corresponding to their 
own preconceived ideas. The haughty reserved Englishman sees but a race 
of forward hustlers; his more democratic countryman is amazed by the perfect 
organization of some great hotel and somewhat shaken by the clatter of some 
"Limited de Luxe." The German dreamer of dreams of social reform 
discovered a land where the future of mankind had been worked out in a 
most satisfactory way. We have to face it fairly and squarely: the knowledge 
which the big nations have of each other is very scant indeed. The only 
difference is, that their ignorance is sometimes born from love and sometimes 
from hate. This ignorance is not so much due to the absence of knowledge 
of facts touching the other nation's life; it is produced by the systematic 
misuse of the standards, by which they judge each other's activities. 

11 



Men realize that the great nations of the world have evolved systems 
of institutions, which make them differ considerably from each other. It is 
quite natural, that to each of them their own national system is the best, and 
that they extol it above that of their neighbors. Old nations, like the English 
and the French, whose part in the world's history has always been acknowl- 
edged, act upon that assumption quite naively. To them the superiority of 
their own systems is a matter of course, which can scarcely be debated. By 
taking it for granted, they have succeeded in securing a kind of universal 
acknowledgement from the other nations. It is very amusing just now, to hear 
France called the most civilized nation of the world by admiring Americans, 
who neither know the world, nor are cognizant of the intense backwardness 
of all French life outside Paris and a few international resorts. 

Other nations, like the Americans or the Germans, who were not till 
lately called into the councils of the world, do not enjoy the same privileged 
position. They are quite as much convinced of the merits of their systems 
as are their neighbors, but they feel that these merits are not as greatly 
appreciated as they ought to be. They try to explain them eagerly to their 
rivals, with the object of winning their applause. That, to me, is a grave 
mistake. 

It is almost pathetic to see some people in the United States craving 
for the approval of Europeans for their own solid achievements. It is not 
only pathetic, it is downright silly, when a nation like Germany is trying to 
convince an unwilling world of the merits of her system. She ought to be 
delighted with the just appreciation, she may get from sympathetic friends. But 
she ought to understand, that no big nation can shape her institutions and 
develop her methods, subject to foreign approval. If the intellectual inheritance 
of a nation, as embodied in her institutions, satisfies her own people, that 
inheritance is sufficient, whether it is called culture or something else. If 
the German system satisfies the wants of eighty million people of German 
extraction in central Europe, it cannot gain additional lustre, even by the 
plaudits of the great American democracy. People make their institutions for 
their own use. It is not Germany's business to invent social systems for foreign 
markets, and it is not her duty to submit her institutions to foreign criticism. 
The great nations will have to realize, that the national characteristics, 
which distinguish them from each other, will become more pronounced as time 
goes on. These distinctive features are not a deviation from some universally 
acknowledged type of universal manhood. They are each nation's contribution 
to the world's social improvement. For diversity, not uniformity, of social 
systems, is the task of mankind. Competition between nations, each trying to 
outdo their neighbors in most perfect social service, not standardization of 
institutions, is the aim of human development. 

I sympathize with those American friends, who would consider it a terrible 
calamity, if the whole world were organized in imitation of German patterns. 
The world would be much poorer, if it lost all the distinctive features of French 
or of Anglo-Saxon civilization. It would be equally impoverished at least, if 
the social system, the German people have evolved for their own needs, were 
destroyed in the vain endeavor, to replace it by some universal Anglo-Saxon 
panacea. The quicker the great nations realize that it is their business to 
evolve the most perfect social system for their own people, as their share in 
the cause of humanity, the easier they will understand each other. 

If nations could take this attitude, they would give up that captious 
international criticism, the mere object of which is to demonstrate to them- 
selves and to their neighbors the superiority of their own system. When 
Americans denounce the tyranny of European governments exercised against 
their unwilling subjects, they are partly, no doubt, influenced by motives of 

12 



quite genuine commiseration. These denunciations of wrong betray, how- 
ever, not unfrequently an exultant assertion of their American superiority, which 
in the eyes of its apostles, has done away with all possibility of wrong-doing 
and of suffering. And when the European indignantly exhibits what he 
considers the inherent corruption of American political life, he does not care so 
much to show his American friends a way out of their supposed misery; he 
is quite content, if he can demonstrate to his own satisfaction, that their ways 
of government are inferior to those, his own people have evolved. As long 
as international criticism starts from the assumption, that one nation has evolved 
the true type of social institutions, and that all others must follow in its 
wake, it is based on ignorance, supported by arrogance. One may be very 
grateful for the many political institutions the Anglo-Saxon world has evolved, 
for its own use, and for the use of mankind, when other nations saw fit to 
adopt them. But there is no more striking example of national arrogance than 
the claim raised by some apostles of Imperial Britain, that she has the mission 
to anglicise the world. This self-righteous arrogance is the deepest cause 
of international misunderstanding. It cannot be eradicated by the spread 
of information; it is an attitude which cannot be changed by knowledge of 
facts; it can only be done away with by rigid moral and mental self-discipline. 

There are no doubt many countries in the world, which have not been 
endowed with workable political institutions ; there are many people, whose 
social inheritance is too slender to allow them quick progress. These un- 
developed nations may borrow from others — if they are free to do so; they may 
be the objects of legitimate missionary activities, if they happen to be colonial 
dependencies of more progressive races. There is no room for missionary 
activity amongst the great nations of the world. Let each of them develop 
and perfect their own systems of institutions. They ought not to try to export 
them on approval or on commission. 

When nations learn to be proud of their own institutions, without feeling 
bound to run down or to reform those of their equally civilized neighbors, we 
shall be able to find a good basis for international co-operation. And we 
shall be able to learn from each other those lessons, which can be learned. 
When situations arise, in which the experience of their rivals is useful to a 
nation, they have in times past always been quick enough to profit by it, pro- 
vided their vanity is not bruised by the other's claim of superiority. Germany, 
for example, in days gone by, has learnt a lot from her neighbors. Her 
political life has been largely influenced by English and "Belgian examples. 
In the social sphere her rural life has been greatly affected by the ideas of 
the French Revolution. She has not blindly imitated foreign countries, she 
has assimilated their experience to her own needs. And during the last twenty 
years she has been paying back her debt, by having become the leader in 
modern social legislation, which England, France and Belgium tried to imitate. 

Experience has shown that an international exchange of ideas and of 
institutions cannot be promoted by missionary activities from abroad. Whether 
such work is carried out by the sword, as Napoleon did in Germany, or 
whether foreign apostles of foreign culture overrun a country in a peaceful 
propaganda, in neither case are gratitude or international co-operation likely 
to follow. When Robert Owen came from England, trying to spread the 
gospel of his socialistic creed in the United States, many working men turned 
against him. "It does seem unaccountably strange," a report said of him, 
"that a native of that part of the world, where thousands are every day 
groaning under oppression, should leave these unfortunates, come over to the 
new world, and in the midst of a people enjoying their fullest liberty, proclaim 
himself the apostle of equal rights, and tender them the hand of friendship 
against their oppressors." 

13 



His experiences have been repeated many a time ; no civilized country 
is willing to be saved by foreigners, though for specific purposes they may be 
willing to listen to them. Thus, the institution which I represent here, the 
exchange professor, is not in my eyes an agency for spreading foreign culture. 
He is an expert invited by his fellow experts to co-operate with them in 
scientific work. He is neither an ambassador of culture sent by one nation to 
another, nor a kind of commercial traveler trying to force a market for the 
intellectual wares of his own country. If he has a mission at all outside his 
professional academic work, it is to keep his eyes open, and to observe new 
ways and methods in foreign life, which his own people might do well to 
imitate. If he wants to do missionary work, he must do it when he gets 
home. In fact, as far as international co-operation in the broad sense of the 
word is concerned, the value of the exchange professor does not so much 
depend on his capacity for teaching, as on his capacity for learning. 

International co-operation can only be carried out on a broad foundation 
of international understanding. International courts and joint international 
institutions may be excellent things; ihey will not work, before the different 
nations have understood the problems confronting each of them. It is not 
enough to know a nation's general situation, to know her past, and to analyze 
her future ambitions. One must understand the soul of a people, before one 
can justly judge its actions, and try to influence its future ways. 

Some few men, gifted with wonderful imagination, may be able to achieve 
that task from abroad, without having shared the life of the people they are 
trying to understand; good books may help them, talks from foreign experts may 
stimulate them. But in most cases neither books nor lectures can give more 
than an interest in a nation's cause or supply the bare facts underlying its 
progress. Most men can only understand another people's life, after they 
have shared it for some time. 

Those who go abroad do not always contribute much to mutual under- 
standing. A network of international agencies covers the civilized world 
to-day, which prevents the ordinary traveler from ever coming in touch with 
the real thing. The boats and railway trains he travels in, the hotels he 
frequents, and the restaurants which cater for him, are carefully organized on a 
non-commital cosmopolitan plan. He does not any longer shed his own habits 
when he goes abroad ; and he judges most things according to his own national 
and vocational prejudices. The business man's judgment of a foreign nation 
is affected by the outcome of the deal he was interested in. The globe-trotter, 
with social aspirations, bases his views on the more or less courteous treatment 
he is receiving. The tourist is mainly influenced by the state of the weather, 
the visiting arrangements of the galleries, and the accommodation at the hotels. 
They are all in a hurry and not very much interested in anything outside 
their own particular purpose. It seems to me, that there is one class of 
travelers, and one class only, who have done much for international co- 
operation. And that is the student. The student, and the student alone, is 
capable of understanding the soul of another people. When he starts on his 
journey, he is driven by that thirst for the unknown, which makes the great 
intellectual explorer. He has not yet a system of his own, as he will have 
in later life, foundations of which would be shaken, if the essential facts of 
another nation's life were acknowledged. He is not yet part of an organization 
ways of which can only be justified by distorted descriptions of foreign rivals. 
Whilst his powers of detailed observation may not be so well developed as 
those of a more mature observer, he has the enthusiasm and the intellectual 
honesty of youth. He has ideals, and like the knights of old, he believes 
in the existence of some wonderful isle, where they may be realized. He will 
assuredly find his promised land, though eyes dimmer than his would never 

14 



see it. And when he has found it, his enthusiasm will enable him to under- 
stand the soul of another nation, better perhaps than her own children could do 
it. Such a discovery will be granted to him once in life perhaps, and once only, 
when he is young and free to dream. Many a German student has done so in 
days gone by, and the Germans are proud of the work they have accomplished 
in interpreting to them the life of foreign nations. Though they idealized 
it, they understood it. They have discovered facts sometimes those nations 
themselves were unaware of. My own teacher, Dr. Brentano, demonstrated 
to the world the importance of the modern trade-union movement in England, 
long before the English understood the full meaning of that development. 

But the Germans are proud too of the many foreign students, and not 
least of the Americans, who come to their universities to study German life. 
I need but allude to those who went to Goettingen. They understand her, 
because they loved her. Some of them, it is true, have fallen away from her 
in her hour of trial ; a few of them, I might almost say, from too much 
loving, for they made an ideal of Germany, which no modern nation could 
hope to live up to. But the majority of them have kept faith in the ideals 
of their youth; they divined Germany's case, even when they had no facts 
to go upon, and in doing ro, they have done one thing, for which their 
nation and the world will be grateful to them one day: They have prevented 
the snapping of the intellectual links between two nations during a time of 
great stress. And they have shown during a critical stage in the world's 
history, how great the student's part is in international co-operation. It will 
be the business of your organization to strengthen those links and to add new 
ones in time to come, when the war is over and when the co-operation of 
all nations will be possible once more. 

When I left Madison, where I held the Carl Schurz professorship at 
the University of Wisconsin, a leading Wisconsin paper was good enough to 
praise my work, not on account of its intrinsic worth, but, as it put it, "because 
I had kept the light burning in maintaining the connection between German 
and American universities." I think I may return that compliment with far 
greater truth to the American students, who have studied in Germany, and to 
(he members of the German University League. You have kept the light 
burning. And as it has burned through the darkest hours of the night, it will, I 
am sure, continue to burn until the coming dawn 



15 



Professor Shepherd. 

To be hyphenated or not to be hyphenated, that is the question — which 
perversion of the original leads me to say that last year I happened to be in 
the capital of a native state in India, miles away from the nearest railroad 
and miles away from anything that savored of the European type of civiliza- 
tion. There I was received by the ruling prince surrounded by his courtiers 
and gua'dsmen garbed in medieval fashion and girt about with medieval 
\veapons. As his Highness could not speak English readily, he had his 
secretary play interpreter. This gentleman was extremely voluble. He could 
talk my native tongue more rapidly than I could. (Laughter.) "Mr. 
Shepherd," he said, "will you be good enough to inform his Highness what 
the attitude in Canada and the United States is toward the admission of 
Hindus into those countries?" "Why do you couple the United States with 
Canada?" I asked. His reply was: "I refer to all British colonies in North 
America." (Great laughter.) Then I thought it my duty to tell him some- 
thing about July 4, 1776; but when 1 was all through, he looked incredulous. 
Now I understand the reason for it. When I arrived home in August, 1914, 
I was inclined to agree with him! (Laughter.) 

We have two great nations in the world: The United States of 
America and the United States of Germany. The fundamental principle for 
which the United States stands and which we have inherited from our colonial 
forefathers is that of individual liberty. Perhaps we might call it a spiritual 
hyphen binding us to England and, in a measure, to France. The fundamental 
principle, on the other hand, for which the United States of Germany stands, 
and which it has inherited from the conditions arising out of its history, is 
socialized efficiency. Now I venture to ask you, my friends, is it not possible 
that the future may provide an ideal hyphen to connect our cosmopolitan land, 
peopled by representatives of many races, with our brethren across the seas? 
If so, I feel that we shall have a veritable union of hyphens: a union of the 
British and French concept of individual liberty with the German principle of 
social efficiency! (Applause.) 

So as to elucidate my point further, I would like to drop back into 
history a moment. Once upon a time, in the sixteenth century, there was a 
nation about which it was said that, when she moved, the world trembled. 
That nation was Spain. In those days Spain possessed what no country had 
ever possessed before, and none has had since: supremacy on both land and 
sea. Such could not be said either of ancient Rome or of modern Britain. 
Spain laid down the rule substantially that the seas belonged to her; where- 
upon Francis I, King of France, is declared to have sent a letter to his 
cousin of Spain, asking the latter to show him the will of Father Adam giving 
the world to Spain. Until he saw that, said Francis, he would take what he 
could get! 

Some time later, in 1609, a famous Dutch jurist, Grotius by name, wrote 
a work entitled "The Freedom of the Seas," in which he denounced such a 
pretended monopoly by Spain. This denunciation was followed by vigorous 
action on the part of the Dutch, who, in a measure at least, destroyed the 
monopoly. Just as soon as they had broken it up, they promptly erected in 
its stead a monopoly of their own on the waters. Having done this, they next 
proceeded to lay stress upon the duty of all nations to heed the pacific precepts 
of an international law, devised by the same Dutch jurist, which would hinder 
attempts to interfere with the Dutch control of the seas. Both action and 
attitude evoked prompt protest from the English. As was the case with the 
Frenchman and the Dutchman in regard to the Spaniard, so now a new 
Pharaoh was to arise in the Egypt of the ocean who knew not Joseph! 
"Not so much by discourses as by the louder language of a powerful navie" 
was an Englishman's rejoinder, in 1635, to the pacific arguments of the Dutch- 
men. Sixteen years later was launched the famous Navigation Act, which 
virtually threw down the gauntlet of defiance to the Dutch. Then came 
another English pamphleteer of the seventeenth century, whose utterance showed 



16 



more clearly still the policy of England. "A spirit of commerce and a 
strength at sea to protect it," he wrote, "are the most certain marks of the 
greatness of empire. He who commands the ocean, commands the trade 
of the world; he who commands the trade of the world, commands the riches 
of the world, and he who commands this, commands the world itself!" 

The seas are the common heritage of us all. Over them and through 
them speed the currents of thought which bring the peoples of the earth closer 
to one another. The seas too are a kind of "hyphenation," without the free 
use of which the scattered groups of mankind must remain in a sense isolated. 

I have spoken of the ideal "hyphenation" that may blend the spirit of 
individual liberty with the principle of social efficiency, or, if you like, of 
"culture" with "Kultur." In this union there is not, there will not be, and 
there ought not to be, anything political. Allegiance and patriotism continue as 
they ever have been — associated with the land of one's birth or of one's 
adoption, but never with both. If the former land be politically renounced, the 
latter remains supreme. One's affections may be divided, but his allegiance 
and patriotism are inseparable; and this applies with equal force to the men 
and women of all nationalities who have made our country their home. Affec- 
tion for the land of one's ancestors, and sympathy with it in an hour of 
adversity, are no evidence of disloyalty to the United States, so long as we 
ourselves are not parties to the conflict. This we have not been, and, God 
willing, we never shall be! 

The blend to which I have alluded is admirably exemplified by a states- 
man whose long and honored career is one that has rightfully gained for him 
the hearty esteem of his fellow Americans. By them he has been recognized 
in signal fashion as a man who, born of German parents on American soil, has 
brought to his native country a large measure of public service well performed. 
That man is the Honorable Charles Nagel, the former Secretary of Commerce 
and Labor. 



17 



Hon. Charles Nagel 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The honor which the League has shown me by inviting me to make this 
address is very great; and, I may say, very surprising, since my right to 
membership in the League hangs upon the slender thread of one year's 
attendance at the University of Berlin. In view of the impatient reception 
which is given any word of appreciation for the German people, I cannot 
refrain from adding that during my attendance at the University I was 
under the particular influence of Dr. Rudolf Gneist, a noted author and 
teacher, and perhaps the most pronounced and nost widely recognized advo- 
cate of the English system of law and government that Germany has ever 
produced. 

The honor shown me does not, however, relieve me of embarrassment. 
Let me be frank. It is comparatively easy to speak in terms of approval of 
those things in which either listeners or readers are known to believe; but I 
think it extremely unwise, at least for me, to pursue such a course. In my 
judgment he who speaks at this time in this country is under very ■ great 
responsibility to himself and to his fellowmen. It is important to stand for 
the freedom of conscience, opinion and speech; but it is equally important 
to hold the exercise of that freedom in restraint by moderation, and to have 
it guided by fairness. I know that in adopting this course I am apt not to 
please either side. That is not an unusual experience for men who seek to 
avoid partisanship. I shall look for my consolation in Abraham Lincoln's 
counsel, to be sure not to please one side at the expense of the other (applause), 
and that if you please or displease both, you are apt to be about right. 

I shall take that course, because it is my duty and my right ; and in 
doing so I shall rely upon the spirit of the German University, which at 
all times stands for spiritual and intellectual freedom. Let me speak of that 
which the stress of conflict has forced upon our minds. 

Perhaps at no time in history have so many great powers been involved 
m war at one and the same time. Certainly at no time has one nation 
which stood apart been put under so strong an obhgation as the United 
States is to-day, to observe rules of actual neutralitj I do not mean only 
technical — the so-called governmental neutrality. I mean a neutrality which 
pervades the whole people; which maintains an attitude of impartiality to 
the combatants abroad, and which does justice t<~ all component parts of our 
own people at home. Our Supreme Court has said 'For as the sovereignty 
resides in the people, every citizen is a portion of it, and is himself personally 
bound by the laws * * * or the treaties * * *." 

In a country in which the people thus constitute the government, official 
neutrality, negatived by popular unneutrality, becames a mockery — a breeder 
of resentment abroad and at home. Why is our obligation peculiarly strong? 
Because we are a unique people, put together as no nation on earth has ever 
been; with every portion of it calling for toleration, sympathy and considera- 
tion. We have assembled all the colors of the rainbow; but our color scheme 
still lacks proportion, adjustment, harmony. Never in the experience of 
history has there been a time when there was so earnest a call for mutual 
sympathy and consideration and understanding. (Applause.) It is for us to 
help to make it possible to have all the people dwell side by side, with good- 
will, and fairness and justice for each other. 

Have we done it? I am no* ere to stir up feeling. I want to allay 
it. I think it time to counsel moderation and forbearance. If we are not 
careful, every belligerent nation in Europe will, at the close of the war, stand 

18 



united more than ever before; while we, the one strong nation at peace, will 
be harassed for a quarter of a century or more by the discord that is being 
recklessly and wantonly created now. 

But what is the test of neutrality? We are told that the time may soon 
arrive when a line will have to be drawn between those who stand for 
America and those who do not. I agree with the principle; but I deny that 
there was occasion for its announcement. Above all, do I contend that any 
such announcement should be made with such clearness in terms and in 
manner as to relieve it from the suspicion of promoting the very partisanship 
which it undertakes to condemn. The evidences of material support given 
to one side in the foreign conflict, with official sanction, to say the least, 
furnish abundant ground for the exercise of self-restraint in levelling innuendo 
or denunciation at the descendants of those foreign nations who for one reason 
or another have been denied similar support at our hands. 

I was asked some years ago by a distinguished representative of one of 
the great belligerent powers what would happen if the United States became 
involved in war with Germany. I was asked whether I thought that the 
citizens of German extraction would, under such conditions, sustain the govern- 
ment at Washington. I might have declined to answer that question — I 
might have resented it. But I said with perfect assurance that in such an 
event, sad and tragic as it would be, the population of this country of German 
descent, regardless of past affiliation or present opinion, would stand by the 
government at Washington. (Applause.) In the worst event, it would 
mean, on a larger scale, the fate of those distinguished Englishmen, who to-day 
are supporting their government, although they can find neither political nor 
moral excuse for their country's war. It would be no more tragic than the 
fate of the Jews who, divided into as many citizenships as their countries, are 
to-day fighting under as many flags as there are warring nations, with naught 
to guide them but loyalty to the government which has recognized them, and 
the vague hope that they too may be the remote beneficiaries of any improve- 
ment that the sacrifices of the war may bring. 

That much is true of our whole citizenship. But because it is true, 
because of the gravity of such an event, because of the enormous responsibility 
and burden that it would put upon all the people of this country, it is the 
solemn duty of every one to do what he can to avoid an unjust or an unneces- 
sary conflict; and to speak without hesitation, before permitting so tragic an 
event to overwhelm us. (Applause.) 

What I say is no more true of a possible controversy with Germany 
than it would be of a conflict with France, or with any other of the European 
powers. It is this very gravity that has made it necessary for us to consider 
carefully what the true significance of some of our controversies has been or is. 
It puts upon us the obligation to speak our minds and to preserve our right of 
opinion and expression; and not to permit ourselves to be silenced when 
questions of great moment are impending. (Applause.) It is right to avoid 
personal controversy. It is wise to leave unnoticed incidental disputes. But 
it is not compatible with citizenship in a republic to submit to dictation in 
matters of opinion upon questions of public moment. Nothing short of a 
state of war between our country and a foreign country can set bounds to 
our freedom of thought and speech; and, indeed, up to that point the right 
to think imposes the duty to speak. 

What has been our experience? An undisguised attempt has been made 
in this country to test our patriotism by our partisanship for Great Britain. 
If we had to deal only with a widespread and altogether natural sympathy 
for a cause embraced by Great Britain, the situation would be best met with 
patience, and with dispassionate discussion. An appeal for consideration of 

19 



equally natural sympathy for the people of other countries would find equally 
tolerant hearing. But this is not the case. We have been met by a storm of 
intolerance. In effect, we have been told that Great Britain can do no wrong. 
It is heralded abroad that every sign of sympathy for any other people, any 
attempt to show that a people opposed by Great Britain may nevertheless 
be a contributor to the world's civilization, must be accepted as a sign of 
disloyalty to the United States ; and in the case of those who have preserved 
the integrity of their un-English names, as evidence of a divided allegiance. 
But for this condition many of us might avoid the charge of partisanship for 
endeavoring to complete the picture by presenting the other side of the case. 

Why shall an American citizen submit to this? I have endeavored 
to avoid the extreme pro-English or pro-German attitude ; but I have to 
confess that it has been made unduly difficult to maintain the position of 
a mere pro-American. In many quarters it is regarded as objectionable to 
hold an independent position, and to insist upon free expression of thought. 
For a time this situation appeared to be the result of ihoughtless assumption; 
indeed, the attitude seemed to be confined to particular parts of the country. 
But by degrees it became apparent that we had to deal with the persistent 
contention that coming to America was tantamount to becoming English. The 
clearer this purpose was made the more determined the resistance necessarily 
became. It is a compliment to a man to have his loyalty taken for granted; 
but it is the reverse of a compliment to take the man himself for granted. 
If we were simply to become English, why did our parents or earlier ancestors 
sail past the coast of England and come to the United States? They might 
have stopped at the English shores, which, to England's credit be it said, were 
then open to every one. She welcomed the oppressed of all countries ; and 
many a struggle for freedom in foreign lands has been fought under the 
protection of her liberal form of government. But our ancestors came to 
the United States because this was a distinct country, with independent 
institutions, which gave a chance for the development of those ideas of liberty 
of which the sons and daughters of foreign lands had dreamed for many 
years. (Loud applause.) 

Why is my patriotism to be tested at this time, and who is to be my 
judge? True, English is our national language; our form of government is 
to be traced largely to English sources. But, in the last analysis, our 
institutions are the growth of the experience of the civilized world; and, 
apart from our political institutions, in the field of science and learning and 
arts, our indebtedness to other countries is relatively very large. Is it disloyal 
for me as an American citizen to respect any race that is not English? Must 
even the descendants of the French and the Dutch peoples qualify for citizen- 
ship by disclaiming their antecedents? Or is it the purpose of the present 
agitation to exclude only the German? Is it unpatriotic to admire the 
French? I have great admiration for them; particularly for the French 
peasantry, known for their frugality; and for their patriotism, which has 
prompted them to rise sublimely to meet every demand that the political 
entanglements of France have made upon them. To-day the conduct of 
the French people fills every lover of freedom, and every friend of sane 
government, with renewed confidence in the blessings of rational self-government. 

I admire other peoples. Is it unpatriotic to like the Irish? I do. I 
respect the Swedes and the Swiss. I resent the injustice to the Finlanders. 
I sympathize with the Bohemians and the Poles. I cannot forget the glorious 
work of Cavour, and trust that it may not be destroyed as a result of Italy's 
engagement in the great war. I find renewed support for my esteem for 
the Dutch; and feel that they are not accorded the credit at this hour, to 
which their dignified, patient, sacrificing and self-restrained conduct during all 

20 



the excitement of this war entitles them. I am persuaded that the Belgian 
government had forfeited its rights as a neutral power. But there is no reason 
to believe that the Belgian people were advised of this situation. In judging 
of the fierce struggles between populace and soldiers in the early stages of the 
war, it seems to me we must bear in mind conditions which were altogether 
out of the ordinary. But why continue? Is the value which I may set upon 
the virtues of a particular people to be tested by its alignment — accidental or 
avowed — in this particular war? I preserve my admiration for the English 
people, as I have felt it all my life. Because I cannot agree with the 
conduct of the British government, must I surrender my confidence in the 
English people? Indeed, in many respects, the government and the people 
appear to be so far apart that I should find it difficult to reconcile admiration 
of both. Is it unpatriotic for an American to express these views? A few 
years ago Lord Haldane delivered a great address before the American 
Bar Association, which, as a compliment to its English colleagues, held its 
meeting in Montreal, Canada. That address was heralded all over the 
United States. Wherever lawyers met the praises of Haldane were sung. 
To-day his name has been hissed in England, and there are no American 
lawyers so poor to do him reverence. Is it unpatriotic for me as an American 
if I find it impossible to adjust my admiration of Great Britain's great men to 
the unforeseen vicissitudes of British politics? Having read Morley's works 
with interest and profit for all these years, must I take his books from my 
shelves because he now holds the view of British politics for which I contend? 
With all Americans I feel a sense of gratitude to Bryce, for having written 
the American Commonwealth — the result of personal observation, inquiry and 
devoted study. Must I for that reason accept with unquestioning credulity 
his atrocity reports, based upon ex-parte examinations and hearsay testimony, and 
made without his having visited the places where the offenses are claimed 
to have been committed? In that connection, is it disloyal to ask why 
prominence is given to these reports, and the results of German investigations 
made upon the spot by men of high repute, are suppressed? And if our 
judgment is to be swayed by atrocity reports, why are we compelled to 
look to German publications for accounts of the horrors of East Prussia, 
Poland and South Africa? 

I admire the Germans ; perhaps more ardently, because as a son of 
German parents, familiar with the language of that nation, I may have 
within my reach some information, which dependence upon a single language 
has denied to many of my friends in this country. I do not hesitate to say 
that I marvel at people who either fail or refuse to see anything great in the 
present demonstration of the German people. It is not necessary to decide 
questions of political right or wrong, to have your heart and your mind go 
out to such universal, unquestioning popular devotion for a common cause. 
It is not necessary to say that one country is all wrong and another country 
is all right. It is entirely possible that even as Great Britain will be 
awakened from the consequences of a long period of weakening process, so 
Germany may have been saved from the approaching consequences of a 
similar fate by the timely interference of a terrible ordeal. 

But this I do not hesitate to say. It is time for Americans, who 
make any pretense to neutrality, to have opinions based upon something more 
than the prejudiced accounts that have been fed out to them. There comes 
a time when every intelligent man and woman is responsible for judgment 
and for attitude; and when it is no exaggeration to say that the prolongation 
of the war, with all the horrors and destitution that follow in its track, must 
be traced at least remotely to the position taken by the intelligent and immune 
witnesses of every land. 

21 



I do not wish to dwell at length upon this phase. I ask you not to 
become partisans in the discussion of foreign issues; but to preserve open 
minds, relying that the truth is the most powerful argument to be brought to 
the support of any cause. Do not identify yourselves in this country with any 
particular nation. Do not speak of Anglo-Americans, German-Americans, 
Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, or other similar distinctions. As a 
descendant from the German people, I have never hesitated to join societies 
that were calculated to keep alive traditions, sweet customs, language or 
song of that nation. But when it comes to organizations that savor of 
political activity in my country, I have declined membership; and I can only 
advise every citizen of this country to adopt that course. Do not permit your- 
selves to be segregated. Stand upon the platform of the United States as 
Americans, and declare your opinions upon any question that concerns our 
country, from that platform. 

I know that the impression has been given about me, and no doubt 
about many others, that we have affiliated with separate organizations of a 
quasi-public character in this country. That is one of the accepted methods to 
create prejudice and discord. For my part, I am prepared to say that I 
have not. I not only have not joined them, but I have been at pains in 
practically every instance to state my reason for refusing to do so. It is not 
for me to criticise those who have participated in such organizations. To 
my mind, only a question of sound policy is presented. I cannot but admire 
the courage of men who took their position as members of organizations, and 
without whose energy and enterprise we in this country would have been left 
for a long period of time without that information which was absolutely 
essential to a correct understanding of the situation. (Applause.) In 
saying this I must draw the line at every act that smacked of conflict with 
the laws of our country. It would not be necessary to say this, but for the 
attempt to lay the acts of ill-advised, excited, heedless men, and sometimes 
criminals, at the door of those who have sought, often unwisely, but always 
honorably, to bring to the attention of our citizenship the real merits of a cause 
that it was proposed to obscure and to misrepresent. 

But giving due credit to the courage of men who called into life 
separate organizations, I must, for my part, insist that I regard their course 
as unwise, because it tends to accentuate national distinctions in the United 
States. A good cause must be won by the approval of an impartial people; 
and, to that end, open-mindedness and national loyalty are absolutely essential. 
I object, to repeat, to the attempt that has been made in this country 
to enforce upon us a certain test of patriotism. It stings. I well know how 
it feels. My people lived in the South during the early period of the Civil 
War. In my boyhood I was called a "Dutchman," in contempt, by those who 
did not know how honorable a name it is. We came North practically as 
refugees; and no admonition ever given me by my father had greater influence 
upon my life than the advice never to entertain a feeling of resentment for the 
South. Having lost everything as a Union man, my father confirmed his 
advice to me by voting for Tilden and for Cleveland. I did not follow 
him, because I was more disposed than he to place the general principles of my 
party above its particular standard bearers. 

I speak of this because I would discourage the spirit of resentment and 
retaliation. There has been provocation — grievous provocation; but you cannot 
set it right by aught but fair-mindedness; confidence in the truth; patient 
persistence; contention for the right. Do not dwell too much upon the 
criticism of the hyphenated citizen. After all, it comes to very little. If the 
term "German-American" is used by way of description, it is perfectly correct. 
Of course, I am by ancestry a German-American. I would not deny it. 



I would be proud of it. My pity goes out to those who seek to deny their 
descent during the immediate excitement. Beware of him who would prove his 
loyalty at that cost. His adopted allegiance might be had at a similar price. 
At the close of the war no one will take his measure more truly than the 
Anglo-Americans. Nothing has been more destructive of the true fiber of 
second generation manhood and womanhood than the too prompt substitution 
of easy custom for traditional virtues. I pity more especially those who have 
enjoyed enough of advantage by way of education and information to be 
helpful, if they would, under existing conditions; and who for this or that 
reason have refused or failed to avail of their opportunity. 

If, however, the term "German-American" is to represent a dual 
allegiance, I resent it. As a citizen of the United States I am an American. 
As an American I want to be neutral. I want to regard foreign questions 
with reference to their effect and influence upon my country; and I do not 
propose to be hectored by men who boast of their unneutrahty on the one 
hand and charge me with unneutrahty on the other. I trust that I could 
go abroad officially or privately, and return an American still. Perhaps I 
am peculiarly fortunate in insisting upon this distinction, because I am secure 
so long as my name is spelled and pronounced as it is. If more men had 
insisted upon the integrity of their names in this country, our census would 
make a truer record of the composition of our people; and the representation 
of some races which it is now sought to minimize would appear more 
formidable than it looks. But I repeat, do not worry about this. If you 
have to change your own name, in obedience to the custom of the land, be 
sure to retain the root, so that your ancestry may be traced; and if you feel 
lonesome in being designated as German-Americans, just include Anglo- 
American in the common family, and most of the sting will be lost. 

As you have been made to suffer during the past year, you will be m 
danger of being flattered the coming year. The political pot is beginning 
to boil. There have been Franco-Ajnerican political meetings in Massachusetts. 
Do you not believe that there will be German- American meetings in Wisconsin? 
My prediction is that the old custom will be overdone. If you do not protect 
yourselves you will be made to suffer from adulation. There will be poli- 
ticians without number who, provided with neutrality dope, will try to 
hypnotize hyphenated citizens. (Applause.) When it comes to our elections, 
votes count; and to my mind it is a mistake for any portion of our people 
to permit themselves to be treated as a separate or distinct class of citizens in 
the United States. I have discouraged the use of the term German-American — 
not because it is untrue; but because the transition from the descriptive sense 
to a doubtful political purpose is so easy. My advice is not to compromise 
for compliment or for place ; but to stand without flinching for pro-American 
platforms, with pro-American candidates to defend them. 

When I speak of the right of opinion and the duty to maintain it, I do 
not refer so much to the controversies that belong exclusively to foreign 
countries as I do to the questions that affect our country. These are not 
purely domestic; because I am not one of those who believe that the great 
foreign war can be waged or finished without very far-reaching consequences 
to our future. There are a great many such questions about which we must 
have opinions ; and with respect to which we must preserve the right to 
express ourselves. For illustration — the ammunition business. I am not here 
to argue the merits so much as I am to say that the situation presented a 
question to which varying answers would necessarily be made; and that the 
attempt to condemn men as unpatriotic because they did not see fit to take a 
convenient view calls for resistance to the attempt. Every effort to coerce 
judgment challenges a free man's resistance. I know that our government 

23 



was not compelled under international law to prevent the sale of ammunition. 
By this time I think every one admits that much. Ammunition, however, is a 
contraband article. Trade in contraband is denounced by international law. 
True, the government is not compelled to prevent it, and the individual citizen 
may engage in it at his own risk. The government, however, should assume 
no responsibility for his protection. It is doubtful even whether a person who 
has furnished ammunition on credit would have a standing in court for the 
recovery of the purchase price. While by this time in some quarters the 
belief has grown that there is something peculiarly meritorious about the 
ammunition business, we have not yet heard of a single stockholder in a 
private corporation who has undertaken to make responsible for profits 
lost, an executive officer for declining ammunition contracts. The ground 
that this business is immoral, and that, therefore, a company may decline it, has 
not been challenged. Is it unreasonable under such circumstances for a 
citizen to urge that his government's domestic conduct be made to conform 
to recognized international standards? 

But, to repeat, a government is not compelled to prohibit business of 
this character; and our government indulged the privilege. Having taken that 
position in the beginning, our government has taken the further position that 
it would now be unneutral to prevent its citizens from continuing to furnish 
ammunition throughout the war. It might be argued, I trust, without sub- 
jecting the speaker to the charge of disloyalty, that if this position were 
right, nevertheless, the rule did not contemplate that the citizens of our country 
should furnish ammunition on a larger scale than they were reasonably pre- 
pared to furnish at the beginning of the war. It can hardly be claimed that 
it would be unneutral for our country to prevent the organization of new 
enterprises and the change of old ones for the purpose of virtually turning 
our factories into protected ammunition camps of one belligerent. I believe 
that there is authority for saying that having taken our position in the beginning, 
it would be unneutral to change that position during the war. This, however, 
does not mean that we should do more than we could reasonably be counted 
upon to do when our position was first announced. Nor does it mean that the 
belligerents themselves might not by their conduct, directed against our interests 
in other respects, give us ground, by way of retaliation, to modify our position 
with respect to ammunition sales. In view of the paralyzing blows that have 
been levelled at our maritime interests, is it unpatriotic to urge resort to the 
one effective peace measure — embargo? 

But granting the main contention to be correct, we have a right to ask 
whether the rule has been consistently applied. Shortly after the beginning 
of the war, the Secretary of State, in a communication addressed to the 
Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, made a public 
declaration that this country would not permit loans to be made to foreign 
countries. It was clearly argued that such loans would be unneutral; and, 
furthermore, that they would be calculated to arouse disquiet and resentment 
in this country to an extent that might ultimately prove dangerous. That 
position was changed after the war had been under way for practically a year. 
Without explanation, our government permitted foreign war loans to be made 
upon a scale unparalleled in history. It will not do to say that these were 
purely private loans, and that our government was without control. Few 
will contend that these loans would have been made against the protest of 
the President of the United States. With the national bank system, based 
upon the principle that it is necessary to the fiscal operations of the govern- 
ment, and with its machinery under executive control as it now is, no institution 
and no citizen would have dared to make these loans without the tacit 
approval of the government. For be it remembered, with all our talk of 

24 



bureaucracy and royal mandates, we, more than any civilized power, are 
giving illustration of practical one-man power. With respect to the loans, our 
position was, therefore, changed. We announced one rule at the beginning of 
the war; and after a lapse of three-quarters of a year we adopted another 
rule, precisely the reverse. 

Did not Germany have a right to rely upon the rule that was announced 
at the inception of the war? If we persisted in the sale of ammunition because 
we had in the beginning announced that policy, and determined to permit 
loans, although we had at first announced the opposite policy, were we not 
guilty of unneutrality to Germany? In any event, is it an offense to ask that 
the two rules of conduct be reconciled? 

It is not my purpose to discuss these questions at length at this time. 
I am here to say that these are facts and conditions that necessarily invite 
differences of opinion; and that we cannot afford to let them pass without 
consideration, or to frame our conclusions in obedience to official dictation. 
(Applause.) 

It is safe to say that barring a few who would force our country into 
the foreign conflict at any cost, the vast body of the population of this country 
rejoices to know that the submarine controversy between the United States 
and Germany has been adjusted. There is little question that, apart from 
the merits of the controversy, the great majority of our people felt that no 
sufficient ground for war between the two nations was presented, in a case in 
which the element of intent and direct attack was utterly lacking. It is a 
relief, therefore, to the peace-loving people of this country to know that 
Germany yielded to our demands; and that as between these countries that 
controversy may be regarded as settled, for the period of this war at least. 
It is gratifying to know that the friendship between the two nations, which 
had its inception during the revolutionary days, when Frederick the Great 
was prompt to recognize the independence of the colonies, and which was 
cemented by Germany's attitude during our Civil War, has received this 
renewed confirmation. 

There were questions presented, however, that justified, and that prob- 
ably will hereafter invite differences of opinion. The submarine is a new 
instrument of war, with respect to which there are very few, if any, inter- 
national rules. Indeed, the development of this marine weapon is so new, and 
so out of line with anything that had obtained heretofore, that it is practically 
impossible to adjust or to apply old rules to the new conditions. No doubt 
most authorities will agree that in so far as passenger ships, pure and simple, 
are concerned, this new marine weapon must adjust itself to the rules that 
have heretofore been made for the protection of life. 1 o that extent our 
country registered a triumph in which our people must rejoice, and to which 
no doubt civilized nations will give their approval. One practical question, 
however, has not been eliminated, and this is, what is a passenger ship? 
Without going into the elements of controversy, as to whether a ship once 
employed as an auxiliary may again seek protection as a passenger ship, or 
what effect shall be given to admiralty orders covering all merchantmen and 
adopted or carried out by only some of them, or what will be the result if 
the ship fails or refuses to comply with an order to stop; without discussing 
these matters, a fundamental question does appear to be raised, when a 
ship, by invoking protection for passengers, as a necessary result secures 
protection for its contraband cargo. In other words, can a ship become 
an ammunition carrier for a belligerent government, and, at the same time, enjoy 
the character of a passenger ship in the accepted sense? For the purpose of 
this war that question seems to be adjusted, and let us hope that it is. But 
it does not follow that this decision has been definitely and generally accepted 

25 



as a rule of conduct. We, too, have built submarines, and we are con- 
templating the building of a great many more. We, too, propose to use those 
submarines; and before accepting that this controversy has been finally 
determined, it will be interesting to know what the views of our own 
admiralty are, and to what use the orders of our admiralty proposed to put 
these submarines at the time of their adoption. In other words, the practical 
question is this: If we were at war with a foreign country, and that 
country undertook to have a ship under its flag carry a cargo of ammunition 
to its troops engaged in conflict with us, and, at the same time, to carry 
passengers of a neutral nation, would our Secretary of War or our President 
give the order that the delivery of the ammunition to our enemy engaged 
in battle with our men must be prevented at any cost? Would we insist 
that a ship cannot in time of war be both a passenger and an ammunition 
carrier; that the ship which carries ammunition to the enemy is, to all intents 
and purposes, directly or indirectly, by the reason of the rule, an auxiliary; 
and that auxiliary ships serving the armies of the enemy cannot be permitted 
to secure protection by carrying innocent passengers? Would we drive the 
principle to its logical consequences, and insist that an enemy cannot protect 
an ammunition-carrying ship from the attack of our submarine, simply because 
it has managed to induce one neutral passenger to sail under its flag? "The 
United States as a government has been the leading champion in favor of 
the adoption of the principle of the immunity from capture of private property 
at sea, excepting for the carriage of contraband and violation of blockade." 
Would it be unreasonable to ask that the carrying of passengers and am- 
munition be similarly separated, to secure the protection of innocent life on 
the one hand and the right to effective defense on the other hand? Again, 
it is not necessary to insist upon certain conclusions upon these questions. It 
is necessary to have opinions; and it is necessary to preserve the right to 
express those opinions so long as final decisions have not been reached. 

Is it unpatriotic to ask the question whether the rule enforced by Great 
Britain against the United States in the case of Mason and Slidell has been 
abrogated without our consent or with it? Is it not humiliating to have a great 
nation told that a rule enforced against us with a practical threat of war 
has now been changed without consulting us ; and without attention to such 
protests as may have been entered? As a matter of self-respect, every citizen 
who loves his flag wants to know why and how it is that a threat administered 
half a century ago, humiliating Abraham Lincoln and his advisers, forcing 
us to make apology and denial, has been abrogated. 

There are other questions with respect to which it should not be regarded 
as unpatriotic to make inquiry ; and fortunately with respect to these the 
citizen who makes bold to inquire stands upon ground which has been stated 
and confirmed by the authority of our government, although without apparent 
result. That our foreign commerce has been seriously interfered with goes 
without saying. The answer that in the general result we have not suffered, 
because we have managed to export more than we did before the war, is 
both insufficient and humiliating. The question is not one of monetary return 
alone, although the practical damage is not to be underestimated. The real 
question is whether rules of international law, molded by centuries of con- 
troversy, accepted by practice and by conferences, finding their final expression 
in the Declaration of London, shall be abrogated without effective protest 
from us. The more essential question is whether we shall stand by to suffer 
the standards of international law to be lowered, or whether we shall insist 
that accepted rules must be maintained in their integrity; whether while we are 
engaged in elevating the rules of international law with respect to the use of 
the new engine of war — the submarine — we will at least not suffer those rules, 

26 



which have been accepted by all civilized nations, to be disregarded when 
the responsibility for their observance is laid at our door. This is the position 
that Holland took when that state solemnly protested, not only because her 
commerce was affected, but because she regarded it as her obligation to the 
civilized world to protest against all infringements of accepted international 
law. If we had sustained Holland in that position, and had gathered to our sup- 
port the influence of other neutral powers, there is no practical question that the 
rules existing at the beginning of the war would be maintained in their full 
integrity at this time. Instead of that, we are discussing the commercial effect 
upon us, as though a profitable showing could relieve us from the obligation 
to maintain the sanctity of the rule. But even the commercial contention is 
necessarily false; because our loss is not to be measured by the cargoes that are 
immediately held up, or by the ammunition orders with which we are 
temporarily favored, but by the general depreciation and interference that the 
development of our foreign commerce is made to suffer. We are deprived 
of the one legitimate opportunity that has fallen to us during this war. We 
have developed one branch of commerce which is denounced by international 
law as contraband, and we have been denied the development of that branch 
of commerce for the preservation of which the rules of international law are 
primarily intended. We are attesting our neutrality to the belligerents on 
one side by insisting upon the sale of ammunition, because that was our 
practice when the war started; but we are failing to establish our neutrality 
to the belligerents on the other side by permitting their enemies to prevent us 
from delivering foodstuff and other non-contraband goods to the non-combatant 
citizens of their countries. This situation may be satisfactory to those of our 
eminent citizens who boast of their personal unneutrality ; but it cannot be 
unpatriotic for those who stand for an actual neutrality to submit that we 
have not managed to hold the scales impartially between the belligerents; that 
we have met one side with an ultimatum and the other with diplomatic 
conversation. 

Very few want war against any of the belligerents. No one in this 
country would have war against Great Britain or France. 1 here are a few 
who no doubt would be glad to have our country driven into war with 
Germany and Austria. But why speak of such consequences when there is 
nothing in the situation to justify it? We have not hesitated to insist upon our 
position where issues were in doubt. Why not insist upon our rights where 
principles are undisputed? A firm tone signifying that our demands, where 
they are unquestioned, because they stand upon the rules of accepted inter- 
national law, are not legitimate subjects for arbitration, but must be met now 
while they are of importance to us, would be satisfactorily answered. No 
one questions that. And if the unexpected result of a refusal to meet such 
demands should ensue, we know that we have it in our power to force the 
issues without conflict. We have a right to resort to those measures which 
Thomas Jefferson recommended, and which every statesman knows to be ready 
at our hands. If we cannot ship legitimate goods, we can refuse to ship 
illegitimate goods; and the answer is made. Is it unpatriotic for a citizen of 
the United States to suggest such ready and prompt relief; and is he to be 
told that he is disloyal to his country, because he is disposed to consider 
measures that might be effective, instead of relying upon protests that are not 
answered? (Applause.) 

Again, I say to the people who have felt aggrieved by partisan com- 
ment, do not permit yourselves to be driven into a spirit of resentment and 
retaliation. (Applause.) Remember your position as citizens of the United 
States. Consider your rights. Do not hesitate to express your opinions; and 
trust that when Congress meets there will be men in the Senate and in the 

21 



House who will not hesitate to insist upon knowing the reasons why certain 
things are done and certain things are not done. 

I admit that after my country is at war, there is an end to the discussion. 
But until that time it is our duty to do everything in our power for the 
enlightenment of ourselves and our fellowmen. Lord Erskine declared that 
if ever the time came when the meanest criminal could not find a reputable 
lawyer to defend him in the courts, then his country's liberties would crumble. 
If that is true of court proceedings, is it not infinitely more true of public 
questions? 

To submit to a contrary rule, I would have to set aside all the teachings 
that have guided me. I would have to disavow the teachings of Luther 
which my grandfather and great-grandfather preached in the old church in 
Germany. I would have to put aside Burke and Fox and Pitt, and other 
English leaders who did not hesitate on the floor of Parliament to question 
the policy of England, when she was at war with her colonies on this side. 
(Applause.) I have accepted the teachings of these men as a profound 
political influence of my life, and I am not prepared to abandon that influence 
now. 

But let us not treat this situation too seriously. There has been great 
improvement, as every one must know; and by degrees many things are 
creeping over the horizon. The American people are fair-minded, and the 
truth is bound to come to its own. Let us begin to look to the future and 
dwell not too much upon the past. Peace may be a long way off; but peace 
may come very suddenly. Our war-stock friends may have a rude awakening. 
No one can tell; and with the exception of war-stock operators, no one will 
regret when the end does come. It is time to think of possible peace, and of 
what peace may mean. It should not mean a mere compromise, if it is to 
be lasting. It should mean an adjustment upon principles which hold out the 
expectation of endurance. There is no lasting peace until the belligerents 
can come to an agreement which recognizes geographical distinctions and 
racial dignity, so that nations may live side by side in friendly intercourse, each 
developing what is peculiar to itself. Without that in the terms of peace, 
further conflict would be inevitable. 

So I say, instead of nursing resentment, plan for the future. Do not 
indulge in that peculiar German characteristic which is called "Empnndlichkeit " 
Preserve your sense of humor, and practice what Morely calls "Weltan- 
schauung." Regard yourselves as members of the nation, with rights and 
with responsibilities. Show tolerance for the people who disagree with you. 
It is entirely natural, for illustration, that people in the city of New York 
sympathize with people in London. Why would they not? Commercially 
and socially, many of them are closer to London than they are to Chicago. 
Some of them know more about London than they know about the United 
States. When they have business with London they are sent for and are 
proud to go. When they have business with the West they send for us, and 
we are glad to go. That is a natural situation, which explains much of the 
spirit that has been shown and much of the impatience that has been felt. 

It would be wiser, in my opinion, instead of indulging resentment and 
injury, to give support to rational propositions of peace; to give support, if 
you please, to those men in Germany who are counselling reasonable measures 
looking to peace. To me it seems rational to begin to contemplate in this 
country that Germany and Austria may not be crushed. So far, all argu- 
ment with us seems to have proceeded upon the idea that this must be the war s 
outcome. Indications are not that way. Without indulging in prophecy or in 
promise, I submit that it is not unreasonable to consider terms of peace, predi- 
cated upon the idea that the integrity of the several civilized nations may 

28 



be preserved; and that some day they may stand shoulder to shoulder for the 
vindication and the triumph of humane and sacred principles. Why not 
give support to such ideas? Instead of boasting of deeds of heroism in 
the respective countries, why not go to the assistance of the strong men, of 
whom there are many in all these countries, who are prepared to advocate 
rational plans for bringing this war to an end? 

Since it is for us to consider our own immediate interests first, is it too 
early to give our minds to the all-controlling question in which the United 
States is, and for over a century has been, interested; and which, in many 
respects, constitutes the most essential or embarrassing issue of the foreign 
conflict? But for the controversy about the freedom of the seas, and about 
the immunity of private property at sea, there is at least reason to believe 
that the war could be brought to an early end. Heretofore we have stood 
for the right of private property at sea, as it is recognized upon land, and 
we have enjoyed the support of Germany. This is the time to confirm our 
position. So far, we have submitted to the greatest humiliation by way of 
dictation, as to what we may or may not do upon the high seas, that has 
ever been administered by one great power to another; although the acceptance 
of our contention would be more far-reaching in its consequences to lasting 
peace than any other rule of conduct that is now in controversy. If the 
protection of private property upon the high seas is once admitted, the induce- 
ment to defeat nations by laying low their foreign commerce will be gone. 
With the recognition of that rational principle, a long step toward the limita- 
tion of navies will have been taken; and a more effective measure for the 
preservation of peace between nations will have been adopted than can be 
brought about by the most elaborate treaties that diplomats and statesmen can 
devise. 

But there is a broader aspect. Professor Bonn has said that our relations 
with Germany must be perpetuated, no matter how aggrieved she or we may 
feel. That is true of our relations with all the civilized nations. The 
essential influence of Germany must, of course, be exercised by force of 
ideas, and not by conquest of territory. That has been her history, and no 
doubt will, in the main, continue to be. But if her aim is to have a wider 
influence than has been the case in the past, she herself will have in some 
respects to correct her methods. I admit that she has suffered because she 
could not enjoy the equal use of a foreign language in presenting her case 
abroad. So far as we are concerned, the English language constitutes a 
practical monopoly. This accounts for our failure to understand the condition 
or the attitude of foreign peoples. We have failed to receive much informa- 
tion, and we have suffered some deception in consequence. Even Germany's 
enemies may now be said to suffer because of the failure to obtain full 
information. It is doubtful, for instance, whether the starving process would 
have been as confidently entertained if Great Britain had been better 
acquainted with German books, or even with some English books. It is true, 
at the same time, that Germany herself, while fairly well informed about her 
neighbors, has not adopted the necessary and proper methods to state her case 
adequately and persuasively to the civilized world. Perhaps she has relied too 
much upon truth to prove its own case. But be that as it may, Germany has 
not succeeded in the past in making herself understood abroad. In so far 
as such an understanding is of value to us, it appears to me that the descend- 
ants of German ancestry in this country have failed on their part to fully 
represent what is good and strong and fine in the country of their forefathers. 
Even now, and I say it with regret, there is too much disposition to dwell 
upon the great achievements of the old country, instead of showing how the 
preparation for such achievements might be advantageously adapted here. 

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It is perfectly true that Germany has something to give to the world 
that cannot be spared. For more than a year we have spoken of militarism in 
terms of condemnation. Now we speak of it in terms of applause. Our 
difficulty is that we do not seem to appreciate that we have changed our mind. 
Should we not begin to understand that there is something besides army and 
navy, and guns and ammunition, in preparedness? I would not detract from 
the achievements of the army; but the German army is no more than the 
point of the arrow. The shaft that drives it home is the social and industrial 
system. In this respect Germany has done what no nation has ever accom- 
plished — she has solved the problem which in the past had seemed beyond 
solution; the problem of protecting the man without making him weak; of 
helping him, without coddling him. That country has at least approached 
the secret. Every man and every woman and their children are part of the 
state. They are developed, and, in turn, they serve. This is one of the 
great demonstrations of this war, and it constitutes a marvel of our time. 
We speak of the crippled conditions in which this war will leave the belligerents. 
No doubt there will be tragedy enough. But I predict that Germany will 
give evidence of preparation for the industrial struggle, pursued even in the 
days of her ordeal. We do not know precisely how it is done; but there 
may be a partial explanation. Germany is the one great nation of modern 
times in which industrial and social development preceded political union. 
She had her "Zollverein" before she had her empire. In other words, the 
social development — the industrial development — had been had before the 
empire was created; and these developments form an integral and natural 
part of her system. 

Great Britain is just as socialistic as Germany ; but has she achieved 
as much in this realm? She has not, because England has accepted her 
social reforms by way of political compromise. She has yielded to the threat 
of political force; while Germany has, in a far more normal fashion, engrafted 
her socialism as a part of an industrial and social system. Universal educa- 
tion, in the broadest sense, has made Germany. As Carlyle suggested — you 
may discover the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, without even indicating 
the worthy beneficiary of the doctrine. 

If we want to be of assistance to our country, let us present and study 
these facts, because so far we in this country have embraced the same 
deceptive policy of legislative cure-alls that has constituted Great Britain's 
greatest danger for the last quarter of a century. (Applause.) We look to 
political relief for all our ills. We are trying to accomplish our results by 
precisely the same methods which have caused Great Britain's difficulties. 
Whenever anything appears to be wrong we try to right it by statute. Our 
laws are more numerous and less consistent than those of Germany; but we 
glory in our democracy, and denounce Germany's bureaucracy, still trusting 
to the healing powers of the phrasemakers. It is time that we recognize the 
necessity for going deeper than statutory relief. 

The situation is entirely natural. In matters of political liberty Great 
Britain was far in advance of any other country. By the declaration of 
our independence we forged still farther ahead. But both peoples learned to 
look to political measures for every kind of freedom; and now we think that 
an Act of Congress or an Act of the Legislature must afford a remedy for any 
complaint. Even now when we speak of "National Defense," we have in 
mind appropriations, armies and navies. National defense cannot be had 
without these; but we are too apt to forget that the integrity and patriotism 
of the people constitute the first condition; and that, before we learn to shoot, 
we ought to learn to walk. 

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Again, what have the descendants of Germany in this country done to 
give the United States the benefit of Germany's experience in a sphere in which 
she has undeniably excelled? Have they transplanted into our country that 
for which German efficiency really stands? Take another illustration: Muni- 
cipal self-government is the one admitted political success in Germany. 
Municipal government is the one distinct failure in the United States. What 
have those of our citizens who should be most familiar with the secrets of 
Germany's success contributed to impress upon our country the advantage of 
Germany's experience? I see little evidence of it; and I feel like saying in 
despair that the activity has consisted largely in contests between German- 
Americans and Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans, and the like, over 
municipal jobs. (Applause.) Is not this true if we look at it honestly? 
We have imitated the political system, instead of correcting it. Frankly, we 
may take credit for having given a place to the literature and art and 
especially the science of the Fatherland; but there should be more of a stand 
for practical idealism in the United States. Not as a separate citizenship; not 
as a distinct race ; but as part of the whole people. The representatives 
of various peoples must amalgamate to create a distinct American type, 
strengthened by the traditions, the customs, the achievements, and, if you 
please, by the dreams of each and all of them. 



31 



Professor Shepherd. 

In conclusion, my friends, permit me to say that you have been treated to 
a symposium of opinion, and of thorough and earnest truth-telling which ought 
to remain with you long and abide in your minds and hearts; for it is good 
to hear the truth, not only sometimes, but often. With all our sense of 
affection for the lands of our ancestors, we know that our primary duty is to 
ourselves in our own community. What all the world has to offer us along 
the lines of human betterment, we shall utilize and employ in the full measure 
of our strength. You men and women of German origin have brought to 
your adopted land a noble heritage and enriched it accordingly. Of it you 
may well be proud, as we of another European ancestry are proud of what it 
has done for our common country. In fact we are proud of our forefathers 
from whatever realm they came, and of the work of their descendants in 
the construction of the American commonwealth. 

We have heard, then, of German efficiency, of methods of international 
co-operation and of the duty of the American citizen, whatever the land of his 
ancestors, in the performance of the mutual tasks of a world humanity. By 
lessons so inspiring I trust that we may profit in the fullest degree. 



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